Most Pixels Ever

March 2, 2007

“Most Pixels Ever” (not to be confused with “Best Pixels Ever”) is an open source Java framework for spanning real-time graphics applets/applications across multiple screens. The above video is a quick demonstration of the first prototype. Three client applications on three Mac Pros connect to six 32 inch LCD displays (each Mac has a dual video card, but this could just have easily work with 6 client machines). One of the Macs is also running a server application. The server tells each client about the master pixel dimensions of all the screens combined (here 8160×768). The client keeps track of its own location dimensions (say 2720×768) as well as its location with in master dimensions (say 5040,0). The server keeps everyone in line, making sure that frames are rendered in sync.

In theory, the system is scalable to whatever your network will allow. If you want to run 100 LCD displays off of 100 mac minis, you can (and I really hope you do.)

We’ve got quite a bit of testing and tweaking to do before we release the library to the public along with documentation and instructions. So stay tuned!